dkt-1.bsky.social
Staff photographer at cultural heritage institution, interest in folklife documentation and history. Opinions my own.
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by the time Desert Storm rolled around there were RGB Leafax machines transmitting with sat phones. 40 minutes or so. C41 films dominated this time then along comes digital and the rest is history. I entered the profession right at the beginning of the end.
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In the mid 80s I saw my first scanner however. the paper I worked for had a Leafax machine--Scitex scanner and terminal built into a zero haliburton case with a modem. it took 20 minutes to transmit a grayscale file. this revolutionized mobile coverage. changed how mobile darkrooms were used
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horizontal & vertical to give editors choice. type captions, spot prints and turn in asap. once in a blue moon I had spot news with less than an hour to turn in. fast film processing--i.e. not archival haha--print negs wet etc. It is easy to romanticize film use now but there was no alternative
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for a football game for example, you would have about 3 hrs to turn it around, that included travel time. farther away from bldg meant longer travel, less time. like maybe 15 min to shoot. you need to be able to ID everyone in the shot. drive back. run film, make edits--need 3-5 shots
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along the way I became a stringer for the photo dept and worked primarily over the weekends--Fri thru Sunday. Mostly I covered high school sports and shot whatever else nobody wanted to do or whatever popped up. lot of times I cruised around looking for features--this is called "enterprise".
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you had to shuttle copy around to the various news desks, and maintain the wire machines--UPI and AP--as pictures were received and copy was received, also use pneumatic tubes to send those to the backshop for paste up. another task was retrieving prints from library morgue. I did this for 5 yrs
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It was work. the way things were done before digital imaging. I was fortunate enough to enter the profession in the final years before digital changed everything. I started working at the paper as a "copy carrier" which was a newsroom gopher basically working for the editors and backshop
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Typed the caption right on back of print, stamped your credit on it, date stamp and spot the print
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Oh man I hated it. Easier to do with fiber than RC. Little specks are okay but like a scratch is such a PIA. Color spotting is even worse. I worked at this paper and we had a finishing room where everyone sat around a table spotting prints and typing captions. But on deadlines.
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I dunno if folks still do that but you always had to spot your work before you turned it in no matter your job was. I kept Spotone in my desk drawer for years after we quit using darkrooms
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another reason why is prefer to scan a print over a negative. film scanners are like a point light source and magnify every little scratch or dust speck. worse than a condenser. I always used cold lights and they just have a way of smoothing all that out. My most hated task of the job was spotting
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this white card is forming the reflection from camera angle for the chrome trim. without it, the trim would reflect the studio walls and be uneven.
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sets--this was a production. white cards needed to be used to help form the reflections into the chrome trim and make that appear brighter. black cards are used to cut the reflections and help the wood go darker and show less glare. diffusion materials like "spun" and "translum" are being used
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more--I would shoot this "in the round" i.e. all sides. the camera here is the D850 and because of lack of space in studio I was forced to use a 45mm Micro-Nikkor PC lens for the overall, the 85MM Micro-Nikkor PC was used for some of the details where I had more room.
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back when we had a hybrid workflow and still had the darkroom we all preferred to run back and make a print to scan instead of scanning the negative. Not only was it intuitive but was also quicker with the 2150 processor. Scans from prints are often better imho and are cleaner.
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Archival processing with film and paper is a dying breed in museums but may be found in archives. The largest amount of film use though is microfilm for records and newspapers. Even some digital is output to microfilm. 10-20 years ago was the beginning of the end for film use
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My job has always been slit between artifact documentation for publications and exhibits. When we had the darkrooms we were responsible for the prints used in the exhibits and did mounting, second surface mounting with laminators etc
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It depends on what type of museum but it’s generally like a staff commercial photographer or industrial photographer. Technically oriented but also working daily assignments that can be events or marketing just whatever the museum needs.
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It took a long time to stop using film and I had a home darkroom until very recently. I donate personal work to an archive. In the end everything I do needs to be digital for access so film, although more archival medium, would need to be scanned. It’s just simpler to be digital borne
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The history museum where I am and archives remained committed to film for longer than the others but it is not possible to maintain a working studio with film anymore. The world outside drives what you can do. I would have been okay sticking with film but started the transition in late 90s
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Museum photographer is a field, a small one. Similar to Industrial Photographer, which is another field. Institutions, hospitals, universities etc they all have photographers and photo lab technicians. Now a lot of these positions have morphed into multimedia and video.
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Started in news with film and shot film for about half if not more of my museum photographer career. Most of that was on 4x5 using view cameras.
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That department is down to one bw film darkroom now and a microfilm lab as well. We had print and then a film lab, deeptank for bw and an E6 machine. Roller transport processor for bw prints. When I started we made fiber based & RC murals in house even. I have worked in newspaper environments also
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I work in state government. At one time just about every agency had a photo department and most had darkrooms. the agency I work for still has 6 staff photographers and towards the end of film for us in 2010, at that time we had two darkrooms in house with another department across the street w/two
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that would make me an old timer then but when I entered the profession in 80s I found the most interesting and inspiring stories to be from the guys who came up in 50s and 60s. Their stories have stayed with me throughout my career
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set up snaps for above. camera was D3X with 85mm PC micro nikkor. the actual camera work is easy this is basic scheimpflug movement 101 for tabletop with a tilt-shift lens. what it was made for. strobes are speedotron blackline. 2400 ws packs and 102 heads. pretty standard, old school stuff.
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I dunno I work with a bunch of younger folks now and even not so much younger who have no clue when I mention someone from my music past in 80s-90s. When I worked on a beach music exhibit a few years ago-not my music but I know music- couldn’t believe coworkers who didn’t know r&b history.
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I used to follow the surplus listings for state & federal, and you’d find all sorts of weird stuff occasionally park rides. NC used to offer seized property as surplus and that stuff could be really something else. I saw an entire train once from a kiddie park.
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archival gray
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Well done
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back in the 80s I went to a talk the photographer here , Peter Kaplan, gave. He used long poles to hold his Nikons with wide lenses and fired them by remote. Like a mountain climber he scaled these locations also. Crazy stuff not just in NYC. One was standing on top of St. Louis arch
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Collectors call those the “gothic” F. fwiw if you ever enlarge your negs you can use the glass carriers for a 4x5 enlarger and gang half frame negs at about 8 across and two rows. It’s fun to do series like this. Like an enlarged contact. I used to make postcards like this using kodabrome or MGIV
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Those are great cameras. Don’t let the simplicity fool you.
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Her uniform was folded up and put in storage for decades, in interviews she said she didn't talk of her service. that was all in the past. I worked an event where Army Times was doing a story and friends and coworkers said they never knew of her service until later.
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After the war she spent most of her career at St. Aug's College, and became active in the Civil Rights movement, with sit-ins, the formation of SNCC & CORE, serving as the first woman NAACP field secretary for Wake County, and attending the March on Washington with a front row seat.
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Millie Dunn Veasey served in the 6888th Postal Battalion aka "Six Triple Eight", the only unit deployed overseas to Europe during the war. Millie Dunn Veasey, ca. 1944-45. From Millie Dunn Veasey Papers, PC.2177, Private Collections, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.